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Hype springs eternal: The multiverse stars on reality TV

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In“This Week’s Hype” (Not Even Wrong, August 5, 2011), Peter Woit assesses recent “evidence” for the multiverse, addressed here by Rob Sheldon as well:

I noticed today that BBC News has a story headlined ‘Multiverse’ theory suggested by microwave background that assures us that:

The idea that other universes – as well as our own – lie within “bubbles” of space and time has received a boost.

After taking a look at the PRL and PRD papers that are behind this, it’s clear that a more accurate title for the story would have been “‘Multiverse’ theory suggested by microwave background – NOT”. As usual, the source of the problem here is a misleading university press release, one from University College London entitled First observational test of the ‘multiverse’. Somehow the press release neglected to mention something one might think was an important detail, the fact that this “First observational test” had a null result.

More.

But how could failed tests possibly matter when popular science mags increasingly assume the multiverse is true, without reservation?

The days are long gone when Fred Hoyle conceded that his Steady State Universe had failed an evidence test. After the multiverse, no one bothers with the limited  kind of reality that a search for evidence entails any more.

Comments
Professor Woit really has a way of cutting to the chase; 'It’s well-known that one can find Stephen Hawking’s initials, and just about any other pattern one can think of somewhere in the CMB data.,, So, the bottom line is that they see nothing, but a press release has been issued about how wonderful it is that they have looked for evidence of a Multiverse, without mentioning that they found nothing.' - Peter Woitbornagain77
August 7, 2011
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There's also the infinity of universes which can reach outside their own bubble and destroy all others.lamarck
August 6, 2011
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Here is the way that I understand the Multiverse: Everything that can happen, actually is happening (in some corner of the multiverse.) If that is true, then one interesting outcome is that, when we are watching a "fictional" TV program, we are, coincidentally, viewing what is actually happening in some Universe. So, in some sense, there is no such thing as fiction, anymore. Just a thought.Tim Sverduk
August 6, 2011
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The biggest problem with this test, whether falsified or not, is that there cannot be any such thing as spacetime, let alone bubbles within spacetime. Why? Because nothing can move in spacetime. This is the reason that Sir Karl Popper called spacetime, "Einstein's block universe in which nothing happens." (source: Conjectures and Refutations). This is only the tip of the iceberg of what is wrong with current physics understanding. I could expand on it to prove that a time dimension (one of the pillars of relativity) cannot possibly exist. And don't let me get into the reasons that space (distance) is an illusion of perception. Modern physics is a complete farce at its core.Mapou
August 6, 2011
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